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Ask HN: What do you use to host your blog?

10 points by Who828 ↗ HN
Hey folks,

I am looking for a good place to start my blog. What do you guys recommend?

I googled around and there are just too many options, is it better to use something like Squarespace/Wordpress or create a custom blog using Jekyll and host it on Linode?

Can someone point me in the right direction?

Thanks

12 comments

[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 34.6 ms ] thread
ColinWright
It depends how much work you want to do in installing and maintaining, and how fancy you want the formatting.

It depends on how much control you want over the appearance, and how much time you're willing to spend on that.

It depends on whether you will want "rich content", or just text with some font changes and formatting.

It depends.

This would be a great topic for your first blog post. Do some in-depth research, make a decision, then explain the options and your reasons for making the choice you did. Many people could benefit from that.

rk0567
I use jekyll for my personal blog (with minimal style), wordpress for an older blog (some fancy look/features). Both are hosted on VPS.
dirktheman
I use Jekyll on AWS S3. It's dirt cheap (you only pay for what you're using) and combined with a CDN (Cloudflare or Cloudfront) very scalable. It's a bit more work than a standard Wordpress, but well worth it IMHO.
thaiphan
I use WordPress on Windows Azure with the database hosted on Google Cloud SQL (previously also Windows Azure).
nish1500
I have tried half a dozen of them, and found HostGator to be the most reliable.
stevoo
I can confirm that Hostgator is extermely reliable. if you dont want to spend a dime i have a huge reseler space just sitting there. Let me know if you want and i can provide you with a free space for your blogging. My email should be visible
meadhikari
>My email should be visible

Sorry but can't seem to find that in your profile page

gesman
Hostgator began overselling their shared and reseller accounts. If you have anything but dedicated server at hostgator - you'll find your sites sluggishly slow. I used to recommend it myself but starting this year I notice gross degradation in speed across all sites hosted on hostgator accounts, including my clients account who are using business hosting plan.

I ended up renting dedicated server, securing and essentially launching my own hosting company for myself and most clients. Difference in speed: 3x-10x

nitinpande
We use jekyll for our blog( https://mentii.com/blog ) and use disqus for the commenting system. If you are comfortable using markdown and need something lightweight and fast, then jekyll is perfect. On the other hand wordpress has a lot of themes and plugins to choose from and pretty much everything that you'll ever need is already there. If there are non developers who are going to contribute to your blog, then wordpress would be a better option IMHO.
rshlo
WordPress, no other ecosystem with such support, themes and plugins.
jamesjguthrie
WordPress for the win :)

I self host my WP blog and use a Bootstrap theme that integrates very nicely with the other part of my site that is pure Bootstrap.

alexgaribay
I use Octopress (built on top of Jekyll) and host it on Github. Updating my website is quite easy.